


Deals and Promises

by k_33va



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alice Is Human AU, Because I Hate That Plot Twist, Deviants (Detroit: Become Human), Family, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Post-Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 02:10:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15353898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/k_33va/pseuds/k_33va
Summary: Summary:Kara leaves to go work the nightshift at her new job, leaving Luther to look after Alice while she’s gone. Everything seems to be going fine for the two... until the power goes out. Now how will they manage?Slight Warning: There is brief mention of abuse, but only mentioned for a bit.





	Deals and Promises

Monday has to be Alice’s most hated day of the week. Not because she has to go to school on Mondays. Actually, she felt quite the opposite. It’s the first time in her life where she finally feels like a normal girl that goes to school, spends time with her friends, and returns home to Kara and Luther as the family she always wanted. **  
**

She just hates Mondays because Kara leaves for her job at the local convenience store. Most of the time, Kara would leave during the day and Alice wouldn’t mind since she knew she’d return before the evening. This night is one of the rare times when Kara has the nightshift.

“Do you really have to go, Kara?”, Alice begs. “Can’t you just go to work tomorrow morning instead?”

“I’m sorry, Alice,” Kara replies, already dressed in her uniform. “You know how much I’d like to stay here with you, but I have help Luther make ends meet.”

Alice looks down at the carpet of their apartment floor. The dark grey color was a great contrast to Kara’s odd, bright green apron. No matter what she’d say wouldn’t be enough to convince her to stay, but she understands it’s to support them. The feeling of hands on her shoulders makes her look up and see Kara giving her a wide smile.

“I’ll be back soon, okay? I promise,” she says, pulling her into a gentle hug. “Luther will be right here with you and he’ll call you if anything happens.” Kara looks up and smiles at the tall man standing not too far behind. “Right, Luther?”

He nods, resting his hands on Alice’s shoulders. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be just fine.”

Alice remains silent as she watches Kara open the front door, give her a swift kiss on her forehead, and go down the stairs of the apartment complex. Soon after she was out of sight, Alice makes a beeline towards the living room, plops right onto the couch, and switches the television to her favorite channel.

“Not so fast, little one.” Luther says as he plants himself right in front of the television. Thanks to his big stature, there’s no way she can see anything besides the far corners of screen. “You need to get your homework done first. Then I’ll let you watch TV.”

“But Luther!”, Alice exclaims. She frantically leans to the left and right to get a better view, but Luther follows her movements with ease. “The new episode of Robo-Gals is about to come on! I really, really, _really_ don’t want to miss it!”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. You know that if you don’t get it done now, then you’ll get it done past your bedtime later. And you know how Kara gets when you stay up past your bedtime.”

“I promise I’ll get it done really, really fast this time!”, she whines. “I can get it done an hour before I have to go to bed. Please, Luther?”

Luther sighs, slowly shaking his head. “Sorry, I’m not budging this time. Making sure you’re doing well in school is one of my top priorities. I just can’t let this slide…”

Alice droops her head low in defeat. She’s already heard him say this before many times in the past. It’s always meant to remind her that they’re strict when it comes to school work because they only want what’s best. She’s well aware of that already and is grateful, but deep down she wishes it’d be easier to get away with things.

Meanwhile, Luther hasn’t even begun what she would’ve considered his routine explanation. He watches Alice’s expression turn to a small frown. Even though it’s been months since he first turned to deviancy, Luther still isn’t quite used to the odd sequences in his programming that make him feel so… guilty when he sees her like this.

 _No wonder Kara says I’m too easy to break_ , he thought. _She’s right. But I’ve made up my mind._

“Alright,” he sighs. Alice lifts her head, clearly surprised and confused when he steps aside. “How about we make a deal? You can get your homework done now, and I’ll let you stay up late to watch your show when the new episode makes a rerun tonight.”

“Really? You mean it?!” Luther nods. She jumps off of the couch not a second later. “Okay, I’ll go do it right now!”

She runs straight to her bedroom without missing a beat, tripping over one of her stuffed animals sprawled on the floor. She recovers by using her arms to soften her drop to the ground.

“Be more careful!”, he shouts.

“Sorry! Thank you, Luther!” With that, Alice quickly closes the door. Now standing alone in the living room by himself, he shuts off the television and walks towards the kitchen to get a headstart on Alice’s dinner.

-

Several hours have passed since their mutual agreement. Alice lays on the couch in her pajamas, happily singing along to the end credits song. As soon as the song ends and goes to commercial, Luther switches to the local news station. It mentions that a thunderstorm will be rolling into their district an hour from now.

“Alright, _now_ it's time for bed. We made a deal, right?”

“Yeah…”, she pouts. “Okay.”

Alice slowly slides off the couch and walks to her bedroom to buy herself as much time as possible. Trudging along, she picks up her favorite stuffed animal; a pink bunny Kara had managed to grab in that convenience store when they ran away from home. Besides Kara, it was one of the few things that she could trust never leaving her side. Before Luther came along, that is.

She hops into bed, squeezing the stuffed bunny as tight as possible. She watches Luther as he carefully tucks her in bed. He does it a lot less gentle than Kara usually does it for her. It sounds like a strange detail to remember, but it’s always the little things that she misses when Kara isn’t around.

“There you go,” Luther says. “Is it too tight?”

She shakes her head. “I’m okay. Did you forget to turn on my nightlight?”

“Of course not, sweetheart. I’d never forget.” He reaches to the outlet beside her bedpost and with a flick of a switch, the entire room is filled with warm, bright light. “Better, right?”

She smiles and nods. “Much better.”

“What bedtime story would you like tonight?”

After re-telling classic bedtime fairy tales until Alice finally succumbs to slumber. Luther remains at the edge of her bed for a moment to think. He couldn’t have imagined that this is where the future would take him. The chances of him meeting the two that night at Zlatko’s should’ve been slim to none. It’s freeing to be able to do whatever he wants now. To defy anyone’s orders.

He quietly leaves the dimmed bedroom with the thought in mind and checks the time. _10:30, Kara will come home in about 3 hours. I’ll standby until then…_

He sighs, relaxing his entire body before his visions slowly clouds over to black.

…

…… 

“Aaaaah! Luther, help!”

His eyes ripped themselves open before all of his systems could fully jumpstart themselves online. Thunder from the aforementioned storm roars throughout the apartment walls.

“Alice?! What’s wrong?!” 

When he stands up, he stumbles forward in desperate need to get to Alice. The entire house was dark, all appliances were shut off. Luther didn’t remember turning off the lights, but from how panicked Alice’s voice sounds he can only guess one thing. The power must’ve went out because of the thunderstorm.

“I’m coming, Alice!” He dashes forward, using his sensors to scope out the room to avoid crashing into anything. He stops right in his tracks. Her bed was empty, the covers sprawled all over the floor. “Alice?! Where are you?”

“I-I’m over here…” A quiet voice mutters in the far corner of the room. Lightning briefly brightens the room. Alice is crouched underneath a small table, hugging her knees in a tight grip. He crouches down right by the edge of the table.

“Alice! Are you okay, sweetie? Did you get hurt?” 

She slowly shakes her head, her eyes drifting up to Luther’s momentarily before they drop to the floor. “N-No…”

He reaches out to her, but stops when she whimpers—and even flinches—scooting even farther to the corner of the room. He holds back from making physical contact and performs a diagnosis. Her heart rate’s past a normal resting rate and her breathing is less stable. His diagnostic rules that she’s terrified, her body conditions are too intense from a simple scare.

He’s seen her when afraid on their journey to make it across the border. She would be almost silent, clinging onto Kara for dear life. This, on the other hand, was drastically different behavior. She’s shivering but isn’t budging—possibly as an attempt to not bring any attention to herself. 

“What’s scaring you, sweetie?”, he asks in a gentle voice. “Is it me?”

She shakes her head, relieving him that it wasn’t his fault. “Is it the storm that’s scaring you?”

“Y-Yeah…The thunder’s really, really loud and… it turned off my night light, so I got really scared. I didn’t where you were, s-so I called for you instead.”

Right on cue, the storm makes itself known by another clash of thunder. She quietly whimpers, hiding her face from the darkness of the room. “Oh, I’m so sorry. You know I would’ve come to get you right away if anything would’ve happened to you. Hang on, I’ll go get a flashlight. That’ll make you feel safer.”

“P-Please don’t leave! I don’t want to be alone here.”

“Don’t worry, it’s right here. I’m not going anywhere.” He reaches for the bedroom drawer and grabs an old flashlight Kara thought it was best to keep around for emergencies. It takes a moment for it to work. After several shakes and jolts, a gentle light surrounds them.

“Okay,” he obliges. “See? I wasn’t going anywhere. I just didn’t want you to be scared of the loud thunder is all.”

“That’s…not all that I’m scared of,” she says, clutching onto her pajamas just a little tighter. “Storms…always remind me of Daddy…”

“Your father? You mean that man, Todd Williams?” She meekly nods.

He doesn’t know very well of Kara and Alice’s past. The most that Kara had managed to tell him was that they both escaped from a bad situation. She mentioned someone by the name of Todd Williams was someone that gave Alice a very distorted idea of what a caretaker should be and left it at that.

Luther can only imagine what this ‘Todd’ had put them through. He doesn’t know what to say, so he continues to let her speak her mind.

“Daddy would always...beat me whenever he was angry with me. Kara would always try to stop him… but then he would just break her instead. I never wanted him to get mad enough to do that but no matter what I did, he’d still do it…”

She solemnly looked up, taking a peek at the storm from her window. “When we ran away, it was raining just like this. So, whenever it rains I remember him…and everything he did.”

Luther was silent, desperately trying to find the right words and trying to remember what she told him at the same time.  “Alice, you don’t—”

“I know what you’re going to say! Th-That I shouldn’t be afraid anymore because I’m with you and that I shouldn’t be thinking about him like he’ll ever come back. It’s not like he can anyway…”

He notes her comment that Todd _can’t_ come back and comforts her with a big hug, which she accepts by returning the gesture. “I wasn’t going to say that at all. I was going to say you don’t always beat your fears so quickly, but that doesn’t make you any less strong. What you’ve had to go through in order to get this far makes you braver than anyone else I know.”

“I’m…brave?”

“Yeah, you are,” he chuckles. “Remember Jericho? I thought that would’ve been the last time I would ever see you two. Even if I couldn’t be around, I wanted nothing more than your safety. You and Kara still fought to make sure that I was safe, right?”

She smiles, hugging him a little tighter. “Right.”

“You won’t be able to overcome your fears overnight, but you will overcome them in due time.”

“But…what if I can’t? Then what do I do?”

“Trust me, you will. And if you need help at times, know that I’ll always be here to support you.”

She releases from the hug and looks up, a wide, toothy grin on her face. Not often does she smile this way, but Luther is grateful for every chance he gets to see it. “…Promise?”

Luther swipes his thumb over one of her tear-stained cheeks. “Promise.”

They sit together for awhile, Alice being comforted in Luther’s arms while the thundering storm outside becomes more subdued as the minutes go by. Soon enough, the storm can only manage to be heard in the background..

“Luther?” Alice says, breaking the silence. “Could you sing a song for me? The one you always like to sing whenever I’m sad?”

“Sure,” he replies. “Anything for you…”

He’s quiet for a moment, clearing his throat to start and Alice can’t help but giggle at that. He doesn’t need to do something like that at all. It’s the little things that makes him more human.

> _“Hold on just a little while longer…_  
>  Hold on just a little while longer…    
>  Hold on just a little while longer… 
> 
> _Everything will be alright…_  
>  Everything will be alright…”  
>    
> 

He sang for as long as it took until Alice had that droopy-eyed look whenever she was ready to fall asleep in the blink of an eye. Looks like she’s still trying to fight it off however.

“Luther…”, she mumbles, her eyes closed shut.

“Yes?”

“I…love you…”

He remembers when he heard Alice say those words to Kara the first time. It left him anticipating to hear those words directed to himself. Now that it’s finally happening, he can confirm that their bond is more than child and caretaker. **Family.**

“...I love you, too. Goodnight, Alice.”

-

Kara opens the front door, completely drenched from head to toe thanks to the unrelenting storm. She’s perturbed by how dark it is in the living room, expecting Luther to be waiting for her there as always.

She flips the switch and thankfully brought light back to the darkened apartment. A small part of her turned to the worst conclusion that something terrible happened to the two. It’s quickly disregarded when she notices Alice’s bedroom door is left agape. Slowly approaching, she’s pleased at the sight of the two in an embrace as they slept.

With an eager smile on her face, she crawled up right beside Luther and rested her head onto his shoulder. Sighing with content of what’s come of their new life.


End file.
